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INTRODUCTION
In early 2025, Afghanistan continued to face escalating climate-related risks, including widespread droughts, floods, heavy snow, and extreme weather events.
These hazards contributed to large-scale displacement, asset loss, and damage to infrastructure and livelihoods, while communities continued to face constraints due to limited access to essential services and inadequate adaptive capacity.
To support evidence-based decision-making and inform climate resilience programming, IOM developed the Afghanistan Climate Risk Index to measure climate-related risk at the community, district, and province level. The Index draws on data from the Afghanistan Climate Vulnerability Assessment (ACVA) Round 2, covering the first quarter 2025, and applies updated data to the same set of indicators to indicate seasonal conditions and shifting patterns of vulnerability.
The Climate Risk Index measures climate risk using 11 indicators across three pillars:
1. Exposure, which incorporates indicators on hazard frequency and intensity, exposed infrastructure and populations living in hazard-prone areas.
2. Sensitivity, which comprises indicators expected to influence the impact of climate hazards on communities, including the functionality of critical infrastructure, road types and conditions, reliance on climate-sensitive livelihoods and mobility from the community as a result of climate-related impacts to livelihoods.
3. Adaptive Capacity, which measures the proactive efforts which enable communities to prepare for and respond to environmental hazards. This includes adaptive capacity measures, adoption of coping strategies and access to basic services.
Communities are ranked based on their overall risk scores and grouped into highrisk, medium-risk and low-risk categories. By analysing the indicators contributing to risk levels and identifying the most vulnerable geographic areas, the Climate Risk Index supports data-driven programme design and location selection.
Data collection for this round of the Climate Risk Index took place between March and April 2025 across 62,658 communities in 401 districts in the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. The number of communities assessed in Round 2 is slightly reduced from Round 1 due to field confirmations of merged villages.